Rainbow Road (N64)
}}:See Rainbow Road for a listing of all other tracks with the same name. Rainbow Road is the last track of the Special Cup in Mario Kart 64, the first track of the Joker Cup in F-Zero X, and the last track of the Lightning Cup in Mario Kart 8. Layout ''Mario Kart 64 At 2,000 meters - which engenders laps that are two minutes long each - it is the longest course in the game. It is a colorful trek through the final frontier, while the original Rainbow Road featured a starry purplish sky instead. It may have been switched to the deep space setting in order to help the console manage the track. Pilots swerve past neon-lighted pictures of the eight playable characters, as well as various items from the series. Chain Chomps plague this otherwise peaceful course, traveling inside the road itself and knocking up racers they happen to collide with. Near the middle of the track, the course harbors a large, three-dimensional, smiling star. This long course starts out with a large drop followed by a gentle uphill stretch, passing through a rainbow ring. From here, the path is mostly level with a few shallow drops here and there. Approaching the end, racers turn around in a corkscrew and then a twisting stretch to finally return to the checkered line. F-Zero X The track has went through some changes to fit with the F-Zero universe : Not only did it had the Mario references removed (the neon portraits, the smiling star, etc), it also had several parts of the track's guardrails removed. The chain-chomps have also been removed, and replaced by road bumps. A supposition may be that the track has been rebuilt on a much larger scale in F-Zero, in order to legitimize the idea that the track is rolled with go-karts on one side, and hyper-speed modules able to reach speeds of more than a megameter per hour when in turbo mode on the other , in approximately the same lap times in both games. Also interesting fact is that, in F-Zero X, the Rainbow Road is not the final track of the Special Cup, but instead the opener. This is due to the fact that Rainbow Road is much easier than the track which stole it's place, the infamous "Big Hand" , which is known to be the hardest F-Zero X Track by far and one of the most infamous of all their franchise. Mario Kart 8 Rainbow Road 64 has been "updated" to the new installment of the franchise, but with some nice and interesting features : Not only did the developpers reused the "rainbow tiles" pattern used in the very original Mario Kart , they also reused the City setting from the Game Cube version of Rainbow Road. This obviously cuts off with the "Final Frontier" setting of the original two versions, but also proves the abilities of the new Nintendo console. However, a massive difference in the layout is the fact that the "smiling star helix" has been switched from original games to MK8 version : in the new game, the loop points outwards, while in the original N64 games the loop was inside the track, towards the finish line. Other new additions include : *A train circling along the first loop of the track, floating in the sky. *a modification of the second loop (the one which circled around the star in the original version) to support the new game's "Anti-gravity" feature. *a final section which includes the "gliding" feature introduced to the series with Mario Kart 7. *several parts of the track had their star-shaped guardrails removed, in order to increase the difficulty. *the replacement of the chain chomps from the original track with boulder thwomps, which stomp the track and make it wave near the middle of the track. Gallery 235px-Rainbow_Road_MK64.png|Icon from the menu. MK64_Rainbow_Road.png|Rainbow Road from ''Mario Kart 64. RR_64.jpg|Map of the course. N64rr.jpg O-MARIO-KART-8-570.jpg WHGvkcO.png 665315273517471815.jpg Trivia *''F-Zero X'', the Nintendo 64 installment of the well-known F-Zero futuristic racing franchise, has reused this track in it's game, having the exact same layout but without a few guardrails and the neon Mario characters or the Chain Chomps. There, the track has been subtitled "Psychedelic Experience". In addition, when racing the track with the 64DD expansion features, the background theme is a heavy metal version of the Rainbow Road theme heard in Mario Kart 64. *It is the longest course in the game, with a total length of two kilometers and 2 minute lap times. Consequently, when the track was adapted to Mario Kart 8, they reduced the laps to only one, and divided the course into sections, much like ''Mario Kart 7''s Wuhu courses and Rainbow Road, with 'laps' being checkpoints that calculate your progress as you drive one circuit around the track. *The Mario Kart 8 's remix of the original N64 theme, introduces trumpets along with other instruments to the track. Listen to it here Category:Tracks Category:Mario Kart 64 tracks Category:Mario Kart 8 tracks Category:Special Cup tracks Category:Lightning Cup tracks Category:Rainbow Road